SBMS143

I was sitting in on the briefing of the General and one of her majors, along with the Captain. The Lieutenant was giving said briefing, as she had fallen into the role of the General's head of reconnaissance and intelligence. Well, at least the face of intelligence.

Dancing Shadows and Cup Cake were out there somewhere, closer to the forward units, or perhaps ahead of them, given our current pace. As the Lieutenant had just summarized, the Left Division was in camp outside of a place called New Coltington in New Equestria; we were sitting in a castral campground one day's march north of Rantoul City, surrounded by the regiments and supply-columns of the General's Reserve. The Middle Division was reported to be filing into camp just south of the city on the Road to New Harmony; the Right Division was moving down the Road towards the Mounds.

More importantly, the Lieutenant had just delivered word of the first enemy contacts, of armed bands of bison spotted on the move three days out of the Mounds and two days out of New Harmony. The White Rose was known to employ war-bands of the huge, implacable plains-nomads, but they were less mercenaries than free-lance maniacs. Tambelonian tradition suggests that wherever bison warbands wander, homesteads burn, and croplands are trampled. They were true pastoralists, who loathed agriculture and anything approximating settled community. You couldn't see the fires or the smoke from here, but the Housa must have been a wreck if the White Rose had gone to the trouble of shipping the huge, notably aquaphobic savages this far into the interior of the loyal provinces.

"Any sort of numbers we can work with here, Lieutenant?" asked the General. "Are we talking troops, squadrons, brigades?"

The major – a greying jenny named Marie du Bonne, usually called 'du Bonne' – shifted uncomfortably and interjected, "Bison don't organize like that. They operate in family and friendship associations, 'warbands'. Could be anything from a hoof-full to a couple hundred in any given group. Not likely to be coordinated, either. Almost none of them get along with each other."

"What, so I'm looking at an indefinite chaos in front of my middle and right? And shit-all in front of my left? Lieutenant – damnit, I can't keep calling you that, makes me feel like I'm addressing one of my ADCs. What's your damn name, anyways?"

"Lieutenant-Captain is an acceptable styling, General," I offered from my corner. "The Captain and the Lieutenant-Captain cede their names upon election, and will not get them back until their dying day."

The aging caribou looked astonished over her shoulder at me, as if a caftan or a drying-rack had spoken out of turn. "And you never let them retire?"

"It rarely if ever comes to that, Your Excellency. The Left Division has reported no contacts, nor has the deep recon patrols attached to the Left Division. But we also have gotten no reports from Coriolanus, either, which must mean that all the heliographs are down or they've been captured."

"Who's briefing me, your Lieutenant-Captain or my head-of-Surgeons? Am I last to get my own briefings now?"

We could hardly tell her that the Princess was whispering our reports directly into the backs of our minds, even as the old General blustered at me. Time would come when the pretense of occasionally flying a couple pegasi or griffins into the main camp to deliver 'reports' would no long paper over our instantaneous communications capacity. But that time was certainly not now.

"Of course not, Your Excellency," soothed the Captain. "Sawbones was merely with the Lieutenant-Captain when she received the reports from the Left Division. Nevertheless, we're encountering a scattering of bison outriders in the south and south-west, with notably few fires along their back-trails. That strongly suggests they're actually screening, and there are organized forces behind them keeping them under some measure of discipline."

"A lot to lay on the assumption that bison war-bands can't control themselves in the vicinity of unburnt buildings," muttered Major du Bonne.

"I need more information," insisted the General. "A couple warbands of bison in the distant front could mean almost anything. My first priority has to be covering the shipyards of Coriolanus. If we're ever going to retake the length of the Housa, we need that fleet they're building. If I'm not hearing about actual organized forces coming forward on the Mounds or New Harmony Roads, then I have to shift our axis eastwards and get the Left Division into contact with this 'Army of the Housa' which is supposed to be protecting the city and shipyards. Lieutenant-Captain! Can you get us a better picture of whatever's behind these bison outriders? I need to be more sure before I start pulling eastwards."

The Lieutenant bobbed her head in agreement. It was already what the deep recon patrols were doing, at that very moment. Two flights were dodging bison projectile fire as we were speaking with the high command. Who knew that something as big and bulky as a buffalo was capable of using a battle-sling like that? I kind of wished that the Spirit was better at transmitting images, I'd have liked to have seen the great savages in action.

"OK. For now, I'm going to have Middle move forward another march towards the river, and Right likewise, and we're going to take up the position outside of Rantoul. Unless matters develop in an unexpected fashion, they're going to stay in position and I'm going to shift the Reserve eastward two marches towards New Equestria. Send a message to Left to maintain their position until we're within a day's march of them. But also send a regimental probe to support deep aerial patrols in the direction of Coriolanus and try to get us some current information about the state of defenses and the Army of the Housa. d'Harcourt hasn't gotten a message around the blockage since mid-spring, I'm starting to get worried that something has happened out that way. de Bonne! Bring them up to speed on our logistics!"

I tuned out the counter-briefing on food and supplies – so many hundred bushels of this, so many dozen bushels of that, so on, so forth. Very important, but not subject for Annals records, really. I communed with my Spirit, and she relayed the current debate about the debacle in New Coltington. My understudy had severely over-reacted to a political situation with the polar opposite of what one might call a 'diplomatic approach', and now we had both the local duc's political representative, *and* the major-general of the local militia under arrest. There was apparently a semi-armed confrontation going on in the castle-town of New Equestria, with a frustrated and irate Cup Cake stomping furiously in the back-ground.

'What exactly can I do, Mistress?' I thought as the jenny-major continued to drone on about carter burn rates and shortest-route shipping. 'Everypony knows I'm the least diplomatic member of the Company. Excepting, apparently, Feufollet, of whom I didn't think she had it in her, to be honest.'

'Don't sell yourself short, acolyte. You're not nearly as hopeless as you make yourself out to be. And young Feufollet is starting to suffer from the issues that bloodmages of her line are known to suffer. An animal-protein-heavy diet can often produce undue aggression and erratic tendencies among ponies and donkeys. Especially when you mix it with forbidden blood magic.'

'Forbidden! Donkeys wouldn't have any magic at all if it weren't for bloodletting.'

'Equestrian standards, my acolyte. I think you will be the necessary figure to allow everypony in New Coltington to stand down from their current extreme positions. To bring Feufollet to heel, and to give somepony for Miss Cake to blame, and posture, and find her natural place on the side of the enraged civilians. She needs an excuse to distance herself from the Company, if only a bit. You will provide that, yes?'

I sighed, and considered my current lack of patients. The ponies, caribou and donkeys of the Army of the North had gotten all of their road-casualties out of the way during the long weeks of training – the remainder were not likely to break a limb or keel over of heatstroke *now*. 'Thy wish is my command. How do we play this in front of the General?'

'Observe.'

"Major, I've had reports of concerns about local cooperation with requisitions in New Coltington and the rest of New Equestria," began the Lieutenant. "There's some sort of a political problem down that way that seems likely to interrupt or obstruct logistics on that route. General, I'd like to send Sawbones out that way to oversee the re-negotiations, apparently the ponies on site are at an impasse."

The General's eyes narrowed, and she looked back over her shoulder at me. She paused, and then laughed.

"Fine, that striped pony gives me the creeps anyways. Get him out of camp, and out of my ruff."

I scurried out of the briefing and gathered my saddle-bags to wait for the summoned charioteers. Luckily we had a pair on call with the headquarters of the aerial cohort, which at this point consisted of a collection of carters w/ supplies and food, and spare chariot frames broken down for transport. We hadn't lost any rigs yet this season, but it was looking to be a high-wastage campaign, so better to have and not need, than wish for and not have.

The jenny-major ran out of the command tent with her own saddlebags in her teeth, flipping them over her shoulder as she ran.
"General wanted a ride-along. I've never done this before. Is it dangerous?"

"Not particularly, but I hope you don't get motion-sickness."

She did.